


Oh I Just Want To Take Him Home

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angsty-ish, Conversations, F/M, I will write something proper one day I swear, a kind of happy ending, just a little something based off the 4x20 promo, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 15:26:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10789416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: “Go ahead,” she says shakily. “Shoot me.”“That’s a strange request,” Fitz says, although not as coolly as she thinks that he would have liked to be. The gun he has aimed at her head wavers slightly. “Most people usually beg me not to.”“Yeah,” she laughs without humour. “Well, I’m not most people.”-----Based of the 4x20 promo cause those eyes changed.





	Oh I Just Want To Take Him Home

**Author's Note:**

> I will write something proper one day - but I rather enjoyed writing this. I wrote it cause it looked like Fitz is more Fitz in that promo and it's down to the eyes I swear sooo ya know. Do I think it will happen like this? Nope. But it was fun to imagine while it lasted. 
> 
> The title is from 'The Devil's Backbone' by The Civil Wars.

 

_Don’t care if he’s guilty, don’t care if he’s not_   
_He’s good and he’s bad and he’s all that I’ve got_

_~'The Devil's Backbone' - The Civil Wars~_

 

“Go ahead,” she says shakily. “Shoot me.”

“That’s a strange request,” Fitz says, although not as coolly as she thinks that he would have liked to be. The gun he has aimed at her head wavers slightly. “Most people usually beg me not to.”

“Yeah,” she laughs without humour. “Well, I’m not most people.” She thinks _I’m not like most of you because I know who I am. I know what I am. I’m trying to get home._

Jemma aches. She aches all over. Her head aches from trying to understand this whole hellhole. Her heart aches being this close to Fitz yet not being close to him all at the same time. He’s pointing a gun at her, and yet she doesn’t feel fear (or much of it anyway) but just an overwhelming sense of failure. He’s saved her so many times, and yet she cannot save him.

“Why?” he asks her. “Why do you want me to shoot you?”

He sounds all wrong. He’s too monotone; his voice holding none of the inflections that _her_ Fitz has.  He holds the gun too confidently as if it is simply a natural extension of his hand. Even in his flustered state, he appears too cool and collected. Jemma smiles inwardly, thinking of _her_ Fitz in his flustered states. Her heart aches with something akin to longing.

She gives a small shrug, defeated. “I don’t care anymore. I’ve tried _everything_ I can think of to bring you back, to get us out of here, but none of its worked so,” she trails off, letting her eyes fall from his face to the floor. “I’m done. I give up. I’m not going home without you, but I can’t live here with you like _this_ …” she allows herself a shaky breath, emotion spilling into her words. “I’m done, Fitz.”

“My name isn’t Fitz,” he says, almost automatically, but is it just her or does he sound somewhat unsure?

“Of course it isn’t here,” she mumbles darkly. “Your dad calls you Leo, right? He didn’t leave in here and so you kept the name because he never gave you a chance to get rid of it.”

“What are you on about? Leo is my name; why would I ever want to get rid of it?”

“Because he _hurt_ you,” she says, almost pleadingly “He got drunk and then he would come home and hurt you for not being smart enough. And he would always say ‘this is all your fault, Leo.’ Or ‘Leo, if only you were smart and then I wouldn’t have to do this’. And when he left…” a pause to regain some of the control that she’s dangerously close to losing, “and when he left you made everyone start calling you Fitz because you couldn’t hear the name ‘Leo’ again without hearing the sneer in his voice.”

“No, no, no,” he murmurs under his breath. The gun wavers slightly more. “It’s not true,” he says, but they both know he’s lying. He changes tack. “You couldn’t know that. How do you know that?”

“Because you told me! We were seventeen and we were bored because we were on the bus back from the field lecture we had on how to collect samples properly and someone called you Leo and you squirmed and said – as you always do – that it was just Fitz. And I asked you why you didn’t like Leo because it was a better name than Leopold and you told me! And I hugged you and we ate sour skittles until we fell asleep!”

She chokes back a sob at the memory she didn’t realise she held on to so dearly until just now. They had woken up with aching stomachs and sticky fingers and a new understanding of each other that only strengthened the bond between them.

Unfortunately, the memory means nothing to this Fitz. Or at least it doesn’t look like it outwardly.

“That didn’t happen,” he says, voice tinged with confusion. “I’ve never met you before.”

“Oh, but it _did,_ Fitz!” She cries. “In the real world.”

“ _Why does everyone keep saying that?”_

The shout takes her by surprise, and she jumps inadvertently. The gun wavers more and more and he looks more like the Fitz she knows and loves. His eyes have _something_ in them which is more than she’s seen the whole time they’ve been here. He looks confused, like the child he must have been and like the young prodigy she met at sixteen who was achingly shy and was so passionate about his work that he could get her caught up in it too, even when she only had a marginal understanding of what he was talking about.  That child and that young prodigy are still in there somehow, and she knows that she will do her damnest to see them again.

“Because it’s the truth,” she says plainly. “Daisy, Radcliffe, and I, we haven’t been lying to you – we’re the only ones who aren’t lying to you!”

“If this isn’t all real then…. Then what is it? Why is everyone else lying to me? If the feelings I have aren’t real then what are they?”

“Oh they’re real,” she says softly, “but they’re… misdirected, if you will. You’ve been manipulated, used; your feelings are real but they’ve been twisted and all the good in you has been used for evil. You’re a good man, and I love you, and I know that the real you is in there somewhere.” She worries her bottom lip, taking a gamble and hoping it pays off. “Come back to me.”

It doesn’t happen all at once. It was never going to, no matter how much she’s been wishing for it. No, that was too much for a couple cursed by the cosmos. There was only so much that fate would afford them, and she feels as though that they’ve been paying some unknown dues for a long time now; surely it’s somebody else’s turn?

Yet something _does_ happen. There’s a flicker of something in his eyes, of a recognition that she had all but given up of every seeing again. Slowly, painfully slowly, he lowers the gun to his side but doesn’t let go of it completely.  Even so, a breath she didn’t know she was holding is released and she realises how much she truly didn’t want to die. What she had said to Fitz she had meant implicitly, but she had hoped deep down in her bones that there was another way to go, and she thanks the cosmos that there was.

His voice is shaky when he speaks, and her heart soars. “You’ve… you’ve said that to me before, right?”

Tears have appeared suddenly on her face and she can do nothing except nod. He nods back, thoughtfully, looks around his surroundings. She does the same. In all that’s happened in the last few minutes she can’t remember exactly why or how they got here. In the moment she doesn’t care. She has at least a piece in a million of him back and there’s finally a light at what has seemed like a never ending tunnel.

“Oh, Fitz,” she breathes, that one phrase impossibly full of all the love and adoration she holds for him.

Shakily, he puts the gun down on the floor and kicks it away. The sound and the speed of the gun skidding across the floor jars her a little but she recovers quickly and takes a tentative step towards him.

There are tears on his face too. “The things I’ve done…” he whispers, looking so unabashedly ashamed.

“It’s not real, Fitz,” she soothes. “None of these people are real apart from our team. They’re all just a bunch of ones and zeros. That’s all.”

“But _Daisy_ ,” he sounds hesitant to say her name. “I hurt her and she’s real.”

Jemma nods. “Yes, but she isn’t hurt physically in the real world. Or not by you anyway. It will take time, yes, but you have to understand that you didn’t willingly enter into this. Alright?” She pleads. “None of us did.”

“Alright,” he mumbles, drawing a shaky breath. He looks so much like a child that all she wants to do is take him in her arms and then tuck him up somewhere safe where he can no longer be betrayed by people.

She extends her hand and he takes it, trembling. Her heart stops for a minute; she thought she’d never feel his hands again. “Come on,” she smiles, “Let’s go home.”

They’re walking towards the door – ready to take on anything together – when he stops and says, “Jemma?”

She does somersaults of happiness in her mind at hearing her name in his voice again. There has been so many times over the past few days when she’s wondered if she was doomed to hear it only in her memories. “Yes?”

He looks at the ground, scuffing at it with his shoes. “I uh… I remember going through a… a portal to get to you. That’s real, right?”

“Yes, Fitz,” she nods, unable to say anything else because of the all too familiar sting of tears in her eyes and throat.

“Good. Just wanted to make sure… and what I said around that time too? Something about not being strong enough...”

“To live in a world that doesn’t have me in it,” she finishes, in a voice that sounds so small and unlike her own.

“Yeah,” he blows out a breath from funnelled lips. “I uh I _remember_ that… _feeling._ So before we go out _there,”_ he gestures with the hand that isn’t in hers, “I just want to say that I – the real _me_ – really need you to be careful because I don’t want to go _home_ ,” he says the word slowly, as if he’s afraid and unsure of it, “without you.”

Jemma reaches up and kisses him on the cheek. Oh how she’s missed him. She hasn’t just missed her boyfriend, but she’s missed her partner and her best-friend. A downside, she thinks wryly, of them all being wrapped up in the same person.

“So you now understand,” she whispers against his skin, “why I did what I did. I’m not strong enough to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it either.”

They go out, then, and she doesn’t say everything that she wants to say because there is no time and no place for it. She makes a mental note to tell him soon, though. To tell him that she needs him the way that plants need the sun to photosynthesize or intestinal enzymes need a pH of 7.5; to work properly and to be the best that she can possibly be. To tell him that he is perhaps the only human being on the planet that _understands_ her and understands what she has been through her entire life. To tell him that she loves him completely and irrevocably and that she would live, laugh and die for him.

And, to tell him that he has dove through a hole in the universe more than once for her now, and really, it was long overdue her time to do the same.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also 'besidemethewholedamntime' on Tumblr if you ever feel so inclined to hang out over there :-)


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